RUMOR: Two new cast members headed for “Star Trek: Discovery”

Over the past couple of weeks Chris Obi (T’Kuvma, the lead Klingon in DSC) has made little teaser videos of his ride into work, saying how excited he was to part of the team, and so forth. Last week he posted another “driving to work” video, but this time he had a new passenger in the back seat, a person that sure looked like Maulik Pancholy. Pancholy is mostly known as a comedic actor, probably best known for being on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock. Maybe he was just up in Toronto hanging out with his buddies and was sneaking in a set visit? We don’t know yet.

More recently eagle-eyed folks spotted a new entry on the IMDB page for Star Trek: Discovery. Actress Emily Coutts now appears in the list of cast as “Conn Officer.” Coutts is a Toronto based actress so it would certainly fit.

emily-coutts

Coutts is a newer name in the industry, she’s been on Syfy’s Dark Matter, Starz’ The Girlfriend Experience TV seriesand had a supporting role in Guillermo del Toro’s 2015 movie Crimson Peak.

coutts-imdb-page

 

Previously announced cast members include Sonequa Martin-Green (Lieutenant Commander Rainsford), Michelle Yeoh (Captain Georgiou of the U.S.S. Shenzhou), Anthony Rapp (Lt. Stamets), Doug Jones (Lt. Saru), Chris Obi (T’Kuvma), Shazad Latif (Kol), Mary Chieffo (L’Rell), and James Frain (Sarek).

111 Comments
oldest
newest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

I am liking these appointments, keep them coming :)

Both seem like great additions!

Ugh. This thing is looking more and more like a train wreck.

Based on what? The addition of cast members? Um, yeah, sure, adding cast members is a train wreck…

Well, THAT was a ridiculous and baseless comment, given the content of the article.

Sh1t like this makes me embarrassed to be a trek fan. Get over yourself FFS. Have you ever created, designed or written anything in your life? Can you at least come up with a better metaphor than a ‘train wreck’ – how about warp core breach, or spatial anomaly rift.

He’s just trolling. Move on.

It couldn’t be worse than the first season of TNG. Nothing could be worse than that.

There will be exactly one white man on this show.

He will be there to screw up all the time and show how awesome all the women and minorities are.

Star Trek is over.

He’ll be screwing anything that moves. Star Trek lives!

Loving the positivity Adam!

Bye!

Whine, whine, whine. So tired of hearing white males whining all the time. You got a white president–(who just happens to be an idiot!), the Congress, the Senate, Wall Street, all the significant and high paying jobs in the society, you can kill minorities with impunity…. What the hell else do you want?!

Trump isn’t a president. He’s a traitor.

IDIC? Ring any bells? Why are you even a fan?

His only job will be to clean the toilets on the shuttle craft. This show should have been called Star Trek: Smash the Patriarchy

Yeah, it worked so well for the Ghostbusters movie. Hollywood never learns.

“All women” wasn’t what killed GB. It was a bad script, bad actors (not because they were women) and a bad director, on top of a bad premise (remaking Ghostbusters).

The Force Awakens had a diverse cast with a black man, a woman and a latino man in lead roles, and that was great. Same with Rogue One, with a woman, a hispanic male lead, two asian actors and a Pakistani.

Ultimately, quality (or lack thereof) comes from acting, directing and writing; a good story and well-developed characters. Their race, gender and sexuality are almost beside the point when it comes to how good a movie or show is.

Diversity is good for marketing, promotions, but doesn’t inherently help or hinder the quality of the program.

The Force Awakens was a mediocre procession of jazz hands that tricks audiences into thinking it’s “great” through nostalgia and spunky pizzazz! In a better world, that sketchy script wouldn’t pass muster in an “Intro to Screenwriting” class at the community college.

Force Awakens was a well-written, well-produced, well-acted, well-directed space adventure with compelling, 3-Dimensional characters in a re-hashed story (unlike Rogue 1, or most Trek films).

If you didn’t like it, that’s fine, if you didn’t like that the story was a re-hash, fine, but it was definitely a well-made movie.

Abrams is a decent visual stylist and casts actors well. The charismatic young leads of Force Awakens do their best with the material, but those characters are quite flimsily written, much more so than young heroes of the first Star Wars … which makes Force Awakens come across as little more than an inferior and forgettable “loose remake.”

If you read the GL drafts of SW before the GRAFITTI screenwriters punched it up (and even after that in a lot of parts), you could say the same thing about the first STAR WARS. How much of it works off of happenstance, just like PHANTOM MENACE, but audience goodwill overlooks it in the former and crucifies it for the latter.
I had no expectations for TFA, given I dislike and/or am bored by everything I’ve ever seen that Abrams directed, but TFA actually works well for me and I’ve seen it three times now. The rehash factor is annoying, but at least the film has a SW-like energy and feel at times, and that feel is appropriate (as opposed to TREK 09, which was utterly offensive and stupid with respect to the trek characters and universe, and that’s not EVEN getting into the 7-year-old-with-his first-zoom-lens-approach-to-misusing-lens-flares.)

We can argue TFA till we’re blue in the face. Taste is subjective. What isn’t subjective though is that the diversity of TFA’s cast was neither a help or a hinderance as to how good it was.

Spot on Torchwood

Although I would say GB did misunderstand its audience
– Sexist old fanboys with the mentality of teenagers

@Trekboi. Except that wasn’t it’s audience, really. It wasn’t a movie for the whiners.

In all fairness, “Latino” and “Hispanic” aren’t exactly accurate descriptors there, at least not as they’re usually understood. But you have a good point.

Part of what killed Ghostbusters, though, was all the people saying that you *had* to like it or you were sexist. Being a bad movie probably didn’t help.

As to Discovery…well, from the way the creator of the show talked, you’d think the main purpose of it was to finally get a gay character into Star Trek. Not that there’s anything wrong with that (as the saying goes), but it’s not a reason to make a show. He’s gone, though.

@NAchum

I won’t pretend to understand the nuances in race, and how they are regarded themselves. But yeah, the point is they had racially diverse casts that helped the APPEAL of the film, and by all accounts R1 and TFA chose GOOD actors rather than TOKEN actors, and the films quality was based solely on how good the stories were, how strongly the characters were written, and not the color of their skin.

I am not a huge fan of R1– I thought the characters were bland and uninteresting. But I would never blame that fact on Cassian being a Mexican actor, or Jyn being a woman.

Huh. I thought the characters of R1 were more interesting than those of TFA. Different strokes.

Nachum, And the script seemed better to me as well, even though there are tropes, like the good scientist working for bad, bad people.

But women and minorities ARE awesome! What’s your point?

Racist loser. Awwww, not enough white men running the world already for you? #CrawlBackInYourCave

I thought you should know: we are all Pink skins. So, there’s no white in Star Trek.

Except for the Orange skinned one … that just grabs for the pink.

HAHA I agree. They’ll try to be super politically correct about it.

In other words, snugglepuffxlz is also a white-supremacist.

In other words, myofb dog is a white-supremacist.

White men of European descent account for less than 7 percent of the world’s population, or 10-12% if you include white/mestiza, white/middle eastern etc. What exactly did you mean by ‘minorities’?

Binyamin, No wonder they feel so threatened

Another troll.

myofb dog. Your comment is already wrong. The show has two white men in it, Doug Jones and Anthony Rapp. Granted, we don’t know what Jones’ alien will look like, but the job still went to a white man.

Anyway, we still don’t know the ship’s doctor, security officer, chief engineer, communications officer, helmsman, or navigator. It’s possible you may still be represented by one of those characters. But if not, then that’s okay. You still have ENT, with its three white men (four if you count Billingsley), TOS with four white men, (five if you count Nimoy), TNG with three white men (four if you count Spiner), DS9 with one (three if you count Auberjonois and Shimerman), and VOY with two (three if you count Phillips).

Nearly half the series only had one white human male character anyway. Looking beyond white males for a broader range of characters in senior positions is an integral part of Star Trek’s history. If anything, ENT was a bit bland in that respect. It kind of led to a repetitive and singular angle on the stories that didn’t serve the show too well, even if there was plenty to like about the rest of the show.

TNG main cast:

White male captain
White male first officer
Android second officer
Klingon/black conn officer
Black helmsman
Female security chief
Female doctor
Female counselor

DS9 main cast:

Black captain
Female science officer
Female first officer
Alien barkeep
Alien security chief
Indian doctor played by a middle easterner (whatever you want to consider him he definitely wasn’t Caucasian)
White male chief of ops

Voyager main cast:

Female captain
Native American first officer
Hispanic actress playing half Klingon chief of engineering
Black Vulcan chief of security
Asian conn officer
Alien chef
Female Borg
White male pilot

EnT actually had the most white men since TOS. But the above illustrates that racial and gender diversity has always been a big part of the casts of these shows and that having lots of women and minorities is traditional Trek.

You’re blind in hindsight.

Because women & Minorities are so inferior to white men? Wtf? You OBVIOUSLY don’t know what STAR TREK is

Exactly. Where do they think space travel came from? They want to have a cast that does not reflect real life as much as possible, with people who are the least likely to ever be in space.

Captain Ransom, I assume you’re being sarcastic? There are plenty of people from all over the world that have been to space. And even if they hadn’t, they will. Beyond which, space travel will so be normal by the 2250s that it will be open to everyone. Roddenberry cast TOS to represent spaceship Earth. His scope was necessarily limited, both by his own myopia and that of television executives at the time. But his idea was good. That basic concept that everyone will be out there was his important innovation.

The idea of “alt-right” folks being Star Trek fans is hilarious to me, given that Roddenberry was a raging liberal. Not to mention all those progressive Picard sermons. Maybe Bakula & Trip & Malcolm & that Space Marine fighting alien terrorists brought in some more right-wing fans? Ha. Though granted, Captain Kirk did have his Republican devotees. And of course, Ronnie Reagan enjoyed the franchise.

Pip S, And not only was Roddenberry liberal, he was a veteran, unlike many conservative politicians who “support our troops” but screw them at every turn. Roddenberry was also a Humanist, which means he didn’t adhere to any kind of Fundamentalist “Christian” creed.

Again, have you *seen* Star Trek?

The saucer section of the shop looks like a roulette wheel…Does it not?

I’m glad I’m not the only one who had that thought.

So did the Franklin.

Steve J, It reminds me of a jet engine turbine

Upon further review, the series ship should now be known as the USS Dabo Wheel. ;)

Dang it…ship, not shop…

Only way this will work is let Nick Meyer do whatever he wants……but as he is not really interested in show running I predict this is going to be a disaster & pause Trek for several more years. Michelle Yeoh is the ONLY good bit of casting news everyone else is relatively unknown (cheap to hire in other words!).

Just because you are ignorant of the actors’ backgrounds does NOT make them unknown. Many of those chosen so far are highly respected actors with accomplished careers. Your lack of knowledge isn’t our problem.

Really what super well known actors populated last trek shows? Each series had maybe one well-known quantity… most were lesser known me, character actors or completely unknown.

And still no word about the Captain of the Discovery…

We know it won’t be a white man.

Good. It’s 2017. As a white man, I’m pretty sick of the minority that I belong to dominating the world for no other reason but a legacy of vulgar and oppressive racism and sexism.

Here here Luke. The Federation is all of Earth, plus a bunch of other planets. There has been massive over representation of our group – even in Star Trek!

Didn’t realize it had to be a white man.

In other words, Ted C is also a white-supremacist.

Yep, people throwing labels at people without justification, this is why someone like Trump won the election. A man can’t say anything anymore without someone shutting him down, for all you know Ted was joking/being sarcastic.

Lukas, I agree somewhat, but we must remember sarcasm doesn’t always make itself obvious on internet boards, so it’s good to put a little /s at the end of such comments.

And Lukas, someone like Trump won the election because the Electoral College is completely disproportional to the US population.

And not a fan of the gays, going by past comments. And now I’ll be accused of labelling people.

I’d wager good money that the Captain dies in the opening act. That’s why the Lt. Cmdr takes command, “with caveats”.

can they make it any more politically correct looking?

Imagine if comment sections existed in the 60s. I can see: “Kirk kissing a black woman on screen!!! How dare they! Political correctness hippies run amok! Get a f’ing haircut. Spock trim those ears!”

snugglepuffxlz,
[snif] Did you say the same thing about the White House staff serving President Obama?

That phrase needs to be retired. It means nothing anymore.

She looks like she could pass for Yeoman Colt, so perhaps an ensign conn officer?

Maulik Pancholy – who played Alec Baldwin’s toady on 30 Rock – fits right in with Star Trek … Star Trek: Voyager, that is. Maybe Neelix can guest star and the two can have some goofy high jinks in the mess hall. Does CBS All Access do laff tracks for their shows?

I’ve never understood this idea that comedic actors are only good at comedy. As someone who has performed stand-up and acted in drama and comedy, I’d say comedy is often harder than drama. Anyway, looking at his resume, he’s done a bit of both.

Tom Hanks is the quintessential example.

Making people laugh isn’t always easy. I consider myself a pretry funny guy in a mostly natural way but I think it’s much more difficult to get people to laugh at my silly jokes than it is to get them to take me seriously.

So I agree with you. I also think that everyone’s problems with the cast are vastly premature. Doug Jones and the leading girl who is in The Walking Dead are the ones I’m familiar with and my impression of them is that they are solid actors. So why should we fear for what’s happening with the other cast members?

Yeah, I’m not one of the negative natterers. I think the engaging Sonequa Martin-Green is a fine choice; she’s done much with a thinly written character on The Walking Dead.

I agree, for the most part, but given that Pancholy’s acting style on 30 Rock was incredibly broad and irritating, it will be a surprise if he has serious acting chops. Of course, he could be a doomed red shirt on the new show, for all we know.

I should add “broad and irritating, even by 30 Rock standards.” (a show I enjoyed, btw)

Or, perhaps, he played the character as he was written– an irritating brown nose.

If the character names are a reflection of the creativity this isn’t looking too good lol

Then again if the character names are the only things I have to complain about I’ll be happy

Never heard of Emily Coutts, very pretty, has a kind of Natalie Dormer look based on that pic.

You can tell the new Klingons….Tall, high forehead actors. Makes me believe ridges will be used

I like Chris Obi’s energy–certainly befitting a Klingon!

@Eric Cheung: Chris seems like a fun guy to be around!

(Fun, and perhaps a bit exhausting… LOL)

If your room happens to have a window on the inner saucer section, you’d be staring at the rim of the outer saucer section.

So now that this is actively filming, can we get some info? Some pics? Anything? Are they keeping a wrap on leaks or does no one actually care?

Looking back at TrekToday’s coverage of the rumors for ENT, they didn’t know what the show was going to be about as late as March 29 of 2001. There were rumors it would be on an Enterprise in the 25th century, or that it would be a prequel to TOS, with T’Pau as a character. It was known it would be in a different timeline, at least. By April, it was known as Enterprise with Scott Bakula in negotiations. In May there was a teaser, comparable to last summer’s first teaser. By June, they certainly knew it was going to be a prequel, with a cameo by James Cromwell. July seemed to be when the first images came out.

So, assuming the show premieres some time between June and September, we’re still probably on track. Of course television is quite different from what it was like 16 years ago. We already know when it takes place, that it involves multiple ships, including a recurring Klingon crew, that the focus of the show will be on the first officer, that there are at least two science officers, one of whom is a specialist in astromycology, that The Undiscovered Country serves as the touchstone for the tone, and SPOILERS that leaked designs show a “Klingon sarcophagus,” suggesting some kind of ancient ship lost in space, perhaps with ancient diseases?

@Eric – very well thought out. Hadnt considered that.

I still find it hard to believe that Enterprise debuted over fifteen years ago. It’s simply not possible.

Scott, the older I get, the more it seems like a year lasts six months

Apparently they changed the Discovery logo. It looks better, cleaner. Will be interesting to see how (or if) they incorporate the Delta symbol in the series since it was the ship symbol for the Enterprise.

The sudden new graphics/logos also makes me wonder if they’re prepping a real trailer/teaser with footage shot in the first couple of weeks.

As for your comment about the delta only being seen on the Enterprise, someone made a comment on their facebook outlining how that’s not quite the case. Several other ships using it, and apparently, behind-the-scenes, other ships using different symbols was something Justman didn’t like/felt was in error.

The quote in question from Justman read:

“I have checked the occurences out with Mr. Roddenberry, who has reassured me that all Starship personnel wear the Starship emblem that we have established for our Enterprise Crew Members to wear.”

Suffice to say that little quirks like this were rampant in a time when visual continuity wasn’t being checked because, let’s face it, this was a small sci-fi show for teens/kids that nobody ever thought would last more than a few years. Who knew it would be scrutinized 50 years later?

They referenced Starfleet under a dozen different names, and while there’s been justifications and in-universe explanations, the truth is they just forgot how to be consistent, and made mistakes.

That post on Facebook was in reply to my comment on the same subject. While internal memos may have suggested the delta as a universal design, on-screen ship-specific patches were the most common choice, as well as an entirely different patch for Starfleet Command. If there’s a conflict between the staff and what’s on screen, what’s on screen narrowly overrules the staff.

Anyway, I figure one explanation for the Kelvin, Franklin, and Friendship 1 using patches that would later be associated with the Enterprise is that Starfleet used to reuse patches, and only adopted them fleetwide, in response to exceptional circumstances. In the Prime Universe, that was the Enterprise’s historic completion of a five-year mission, in the Kelvin Timeline it was the sacrifice of the Kelvin, which also revealed the identity of the Romulans for the first time, from their point of view.

Im a canon junkie but this is one of those instances where I wouldnt mind if they retconned it to be what was intended – using the “Enterprise” patch as the Starfleet insignia.

They can always use throw away lines to reference different patches – perhaps a medical ship or special assignment ship had different ones.

Ironically, I’m not a massive canon junkie, but before 2009, the TOS design aesthetic was pretty immutable whenever it was revisited. It seemed like a conscious decision, once Relics happened, that designs would be adhered to as closely as possible when visiting specific time periods. I think that setting this in the Prime Universe does carry with it a slightly higher threshold for justifying changes than the Kelvin Timeline, but I think I’d be reasonably happy as long as the explanation made even a little sense.

It’s far from the most important thing in the show, ultimately. It seems like everything else is going in a direction I’m excited by, creatively speaking, other than the delays and losing Fuller.

The point i’m making is that this is a situation where they’d be correcting an old mistake, because back then it wasn’t important enough to care about. Had they had it to do over again, i’m sure they’d have been more consistent with a lot of things.

This is there chance to “do it over again.”

I hope they retcon a lot of TOS’ silly mistakes and corny designs.

Yeah I dont think the instances where different ship patches were shown were important enough to require any sort of wide-spread explanation if they pretend it never happened. It could be as simple as the adoption of the fleet-wide patch was being transitioned in over a period of years (perhaps as ships were launched or returned for dry dock). If they show anyone sporting a different patch, even without mention, it maintains continuity.

How many versions of Star Fleet did they have before they decided on “Star Fleet”? I recall the Earth Space Probe Agency, which I believe they did canonize and make sense of. Wasn’t their another too?

There were at least four terms for “Star Fleet” at one point they almost settled on “The United Earth Space Probe Agency” because in one episode they even abbreviated it to “UESPA”. I had an old Trek reference book called “The History of the Future” and in it they explain the different names and even make in-universe justifications, one being that in our world, the CIA has gone by many colloquial names, from “The Pentagon”, to “The Silent Service.”

Not only that, TUP, but the ship went by “United Space Ship Enterprise” and other agency monikers ….

@TUP. Or the different patches for different ships was adopted later in some weird bureaucratic decision – maybe the Enterprise was so far out in space that they didn’t get theirs updated (a Starbase stop isn’t enough time to re-outfit the entire crew). And then, luckily, the whole thing was abandoned by the time their mission ended.

And then they all got taupe pajamas.

Yeah, I could think of three or four minor changes to the TOS uniform that would bring it into line with both ENT and TNG very easily. Move the ranks to the collar, make them the same as the other series’ (e.g., four for captain instead of 2.5), standardize the insignia across ships and divisions, and maybe add a black stripe around the shoulders and chest.

Okay, sure. But, Relics and Trials and Tribble-ations and In a Mirror, Darkly episode were all about nostalgia. They weren’t an entire series set in that timeline and they didn’t need any degree of verisimilitude, even within their show’s universes.

The explanation? This is a decade before. Things looked and functioned differently in the ’90s compared to the ’80s.

Torchwood, a sci-fi show for teens/kids? Rully? I’ve never thought of TOS as such. I don’t think Roddenberry wrote it for kids.

Next it will a disabled gay black woman.

Sounds great to me!

This is why I don’t by the idea that many who object to diverse casting would rather it be a meritocracy. If they did, they wouldn’t find the idea of a disabled gay black woman inherently funny. They’d just say, “Okay, if she’s talented, and fits the part, great!”

But I would be in favor of such a character because characters aren’t just created by writers, but by actors. The actors play parts in a certain way that reflect their points of view. It’s inevitable. By that I don’t mean that they literally share the same views as the character, but they have a specific interpretation of why a character behaves a certain way and believes certain things. When it’s someone with as unique a perspective as a disabled gay black woman might have, then it would likely provide a much more compelling arc for the character than if the actor was simply someone exactly like the writer. It’s that synthesis of the writer’s point of view, the actor’s point of view, producer’s point of view, and the director’s point of view, in that order, that makes the character something wholly unique. The more different all four of those parts are, the more potential for something that isn’t a cliche.

This show is going to be awful. Look at enterprise. Low ratings, poor writing and even worse acting.

If they really wanted to reach out to fans of the last 30 years the would have gone forward in time. Added new characters, with the classic characters of TNG, DS9 and VOY. Mixing it up and bit and continuing development that way. As a life long trek fan. Safe to say I won’t be watching this one.

You don’t deserve to watch it.

Shammy, ENT had low ratings indeed, but was not consistently badly written nor acted.

And I doubt you’ll be able to resist checking DISC out, if only to DIS it.

Awesome new indeed! I went to primary and highschool with Emily and I’m still good friends with her brother. The role of a lifetime and I’m glad shes involved.

back where trek is best on tv

As I predicted, trailer released! Was hoping to see some actual footage, but it’s exciting nonetheless. Loving the look so far.